CES 2020: iBuyPower has some cool cases and lighting options

iBuyPower this year not only had some great computer setups, but they're moving into a new space with colored lighting.

With Intel announcing the Ghost Canyon Nuc, iBuyPower had their take on a small form factor case. The Revolt GT3 measures just 15'9" x 6.5" x 8.7". The panels are held on to the side by magnets so they can easily be changed out. iBuyPower will have both mesh and tempered glass panels for you to use. With the mesh panels, they are concave so you can put them facing in to have a sleek case, but you can also reverse them to allow more room in the case to add say a hard drive or fans.

Inside, a frame holds all the components that can easily slide out for you to tinker with. One side holds the Ghost Canyon NUC and power supply while the other side will house the graphics card. What's nice about the internal frame is it's kind of suspended inside the outer frame by rubber supports so it gives a little bit of protection to the internals, which is important for when iBuyPower ships systems to help decrease the chances of it being damaged in transport.

iBuyPower will have both an iTX motherboard and as I mentioned earlier, the Ghost Canyon NUC. For those wanting to get the Ghost Canyon version, it'll come with a power supply because there's a proprietary cable for that.

They are looking at around April for Revolt GT3 systems to be available.

Two water cooling setups were shown in the booth. The Element Duel case features a split design where the motherboard and expansion components face out one side and the other half houses your hard drives and power supply. Tempered glass on the front and side lets you see inside the chassis pretty easily and you can admire the custom bends in the water cooling that you can do with this case.

iBuyPower will sell this in both custom builds and the case only so you'll have the ability to just pick up the chassis and put in your own components on this one.

Now, when doing water cooling, iBuyPower figures there's about a $500 premium to build and ship these systems. There's a lot that goes in to protecting everything in transport. With the Element CL, they're looking to knock that premium down to roughly $100. There's a large reservoir in the front of the case and as you can see in the pictures, there's only a single 90 degree bend from the components to the reservoir. This cuts down a lot of time as they aren't doing many custom bends in the tubes.

Another way they are cutting down costs and making it more solid is they use shark bite fittings. Inside the connectors are these teeth that grip onto the tub making a solid connection that you can almost hang on. The tube will break before the connector slides off. To take the fitting off, you pull down on a ring that releases the teeth. No more twisting so putting these together should be a lot quicker.

So the design of the Element CL and the parts used, iBuyPower will look to streamline the prebuilds of water cooled systems and help consumers save some money as well.

I'm a fan of the companies' Snowblind cases with the transparent LCD screens on the side and at CES 2020, they showed off their next iteration of it. It uses the same panel as last year and it's the same split design as the Element Duel. It also has that updated pogo pin connector that was shown last year so taking off the panel and putting it back on is a breeze.

Finally, iBuyPower is moving into the smart home space with a set of smart lights. The first setup I saw had these long oval shaped colored lights that'll come in a three or five pack for $149 and $299 respectively. Place one on each side of your TV, one behind the TV, and two behind you and get a sort of surround lighting effect.

You can use the app to customize how you want to lights to look from color to brightness and you can even have the lights examine what's on the TV and mimic the color for that side of it.

They also had a square overhead light design but it’s something they're just thinking about right now. Hanging lights on the ceiling is a lot more work than just doing it on the walls so iBuyPower will have to think about good ways to engineer the square one to allow for easy hanging and making sure it safely stays that way.

Overall, iBuyPower has some really good cases and lighting options coming for 2020.